Dark Souls

by Paula Morris

  “You ran away?”

  “When I was fifteen. Wasn’t the first time. The first was after … someone died.”

  “Your father?” asked Miranda. Nick had only talked about his mother moving away.

  He gave a contemptuous snort.

  “No, he’s still alive. Getting fat, probably, on his estate up in Scotland. Ripping off investment bankers who’ll pay through the nose for a chance to shoot a deer. They got divorced, him and my mother, when I was small. Haven’t seen him for years.”

  His parents sounded as though they had money, Miranda thought. So why did Nick dress in such ragged clothes? Maybe it was all just a big Goth pose. But she couldn’t ask him any more questions. The sun was setting, any warmth seeping out of the day. The darkness made her feel more self-conscious rather than less, painfully aware of the slight pressure of Nick’s arm against hers.

  “My brother,” Nick said suddenly, his voice soft. “He was the one who died. When I was thirteen. He was a lot older than me — he was twenty-one. But I hadn’t seen him for several years at that point. He’d been … away.”

  “At college?” Miranda asked, glancing at him. Nick’s face was obscured by the shadows.

  “In a mental hospital. Just outside the city. That’s where he died. He committed suicide.”

  “How awful,” Miranda said, because she had to say something, even though there was nothing to say. Losing someone you loved was unbearable, unspeakable. She knew that firsthand. Losing your brother in such a terrible way just had to derail you completely. If Rob had been killed in the accident … Miranda couldn’t bear to think about it. No wonder Nick had run away to London. No wonder his mother had moved to another country.

  “My mother wanted to have the funeral in the Minster.” Nick sounded far away. “My parents got married in there. Big society do. They said no, of course. Mental case, killed himself. Not entitled to anything, as far as the Church was concerned. He’s buried in the village where my grandparents live, way out there, where nobody has to know about him, or think about him, ever again.”

  “You think about him.” This was such a sad story, Miranda thought. She looked up at Nick. The shadows softened the angles of his face.

  “I saw him,” he said. “Day of the funeral. We were walking away from the gravesite, and something made me turn around. He was standing by the grave, looking at the pile of dirt. I only saw him from the back, but I knew it was him. Then he walked through the churchyard and disappeared into a field. I told my mother — pointed to him, when he was walking past all the graves. She couldn’t see anything. Nobody could. That was the first time I realized …”

  “… you could see ghosts,” said Miranda, waves of relief washing through her. She wasn’t a freak. She wasn’t crazy. This happened to other people as well.

  “Same for you?” Nick turned his head, leaning into her. “The friend you mentioned, the one who died? Six months ago, right?”

  “This summer,” she told him, almost whispering. “Jenna and me and my brother — we were in a car accident. Rob and I were okay, more or less, but Jenna … They told me she was dead, but I swear to you, she walked past me and into the field. Her body was still there in the car …”

  “… but her spirit had other ideas.” Nick scuffed at the wet grass with the toe of his boot.

  “I’m still getting used to it, this seeing-ghosts thing. You’ve had longer to figure it all out, I guess.” Miranda didn’t feel quite so scared of Nick anymore. In one very crucial way, they were two of a kind.

  “Seven years.” He sounded weary. Sad. “Your friend’s name was Jenna?”

  “Yes. What was your brother’s name?”

  “Richard.”

  “Richard Gant,” said Miranda. Nick wheezed out a laugh.

  “That’s not my real last name,” he said, tapping his chest until Miranda leaned forward to look. The logo on his sweater, embroidered in a slightly darker gray, read GANT. “It was the first thing that came into my head the other day. Not used to talking about myself, I suppose. I usually don’t tell people about any of this. But you … you’re not like other people.”

  Miranda stared down at her knees, her cheeks burning.

  “Look up there,” he said, and he nudged her with his shoulder.

  Miranda followed his gaze to the city walls. Some kind of night watchman in a long coat, holding a swinging lantern, was making his way along.

  “He’s closing the walkway,” she said, but Nick shook his head.

  “Watch,” he said. Another jogger, visible mainly because of his fluorescent orange armband, pounded along the walkway toward Bootham Bar. Instead of running around the man with the swinging lantern, he ran straight through him, as though the night watchman were no more than a puff of mist. Miranda gasped.

  “How did you know?” she asked. The night watchman had looked completely real and alive.

  “I’ve seen him before,” Nick admitted. “Tried talking to him once, but he didn’t seem to hear me. Didn’t answer, anyway.”

  “Jenna didn’t speak to me,” Miranda told him. It was so strange and liberating to be able to talk about that night to someone who understood. Miranda couldn’t believe she was saying these things out loud. “Did your brother speak to you?”

  “Not then.” Nick frowned. He squirmed away from her, and Miranda regretted asking the question. “Come on, it’s dark enough now. Keep low, and follow me.”

  Miranda struggled to her feet, freeing up Nick’s coat so he could creep around the shed. He wended his way between two tall buildings, stooping as he passed windows. Miranda followed him, wishing that the crunch of gravel wasn’t so loud beneath her boots, only vaguely conscious of passing landmarks — a wooden garden gate, a moss-covered basin surrounded by terra-cotta pots, stone lions perched on their hind legs on the tops of columns.

  Soon they were stealing across cobbles through a parking lot at the side of a grand stone house. The lot was empty except for a line of orange bollards and some yellow DO NOT CROSS tape strung across a stubby makeshift fence. Behind them, the cobbles had been lifted and the ground was being excavated. Pipes were exposed and, beyond them, the pit was even deeper. The ground along the lowest floor of the building itself — the basement, judging by its low windows — had been dug away by several feet. A paint-streaked tarp, held down by bricks, covered only some of the area.

  Nick dragged the temporary fence post out of place, so there was enough room for them to squeeze through. Miranda, stumbling on a dug-up cobble, couldn’t understand where they were going. There were no doors anywhere in sight. She hoped that Nick wasn’t going to break a window.

  But he stopped at the tarp, moving a brick to check underneath it.

  “Here,” he said, and folded the tarp back into place. “This is about as low as we’ll get. We can sit on this. I don’t think it’ll get in the way.”

  He sat down with his back against the wall, legs outstretched, and looked up at Miranda expectantly. She scuttled into place next to him, her back against the wall, too. She was going to have to get changed as soon as she got home: Every part of her felt damp and cold.

  “Put your hands on the ground, like this,” Nick instructed, pressing his palms flat against the tarp. “Take your gloves off.”

  “Why?” asked Miranda, but doing as he said.

  “York was an important Roman city,” he told her, as though that was the logical answer to her question. “The emperor Constantine was crowned here. Remember at Bootham Bar, when I said that’s the way Roman soldiers marched north? Petergate was a Roman road, the Via Principalis.”

  “And Stonegate,” Miranda said, remembering something her father had said. “That was a Roman road, too.”

  “Via Praetoria,” said Nick. “And right underneath us, cutting through this building and running down the street beneath the Minster, is the old Via Decumana. The two roads used to meet in the middle, at what would have been the big HQ, the center of the Roman fort. The Minster was
built on top of it.”

  “So we can see Roman ghosts here?” Miranda asked, suddenly excited. All this scrambling and hiding — all this breaking and entering — would be worth it if she could see Romans. But Nick was shaking his head, his smile dismissive.

  “Too high up,” he said. “The Roman road was much lower — almost twenty feet down. We’d have to be in the cellar to see anything.”

  “Oh,” said Miranda, disappointed.

  “They’ve been spotted a few times over the years down there,” Nick said. “Always around this time of day, in the wintertime. Tours go in there sometimes, to wait for them. But what they don’t get is that only a few people can see ghosts.”

  He raised his eyebrows at Miranda, and she smiled back at him.

  “There’s all sorts of rubbish talked as well, about them being the famous lost Ninth Legion,” he continued. “Marching off into the northern wilderness, never to be seen again. This was the last place they were stationed in Britain.”

  “How do you know so much history when —” Miranda stopped herself. She was about to say “you didn’t even finish school?” but it sounded too rude a question. Nick glanced at her, amused.

  “This isn’t stuff you learn at school,” he said. “I read books — I always did. You can’t trust the stories people tell, especially around here, where there’s profit in it. Saying the ghosts down here are the lost Ninth Legion, thousands of Roman soldiers about to be wiped out forever, makes a good story for the tourists even if it’s not true. Here — can you feel them?”

  Miranda didn’t understand until Nick waved his hands at her and then pressed them firmly against the tarp. She pushed down with her own hands, feeling the tarp give way a little as it was tamped into the soft earth. From deep within the ground she felt a vibration, something shuddering. The motion made her hands tremble.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “Men. Horses. Dozens of them. They’re getting closer — can you tell?”

  She nodded. It felt like thunder rumbling underground. The soil beneath her was pulsing, the way a car seemed to pulse with the bass when the driver had the stereo turned up way high. It was rhythmic like the bass, too. Footsteps and hooves clopping along the road. When Miranda closed her eyes, she could hear them as well as feel them. Heavy, trudging steps. A shout — guttural, echoing — and then a shrill blast of sound that made her jump.

  “Trumpet,” said Nick. He must have heard it, too. “Announcing their arrival.”

  The footsteps kept thudding, but they were growing more distant now. Miranda realized she was clawing her fingers into the tarp, eager to feel the last of the procession.

  When the ground stopped pulsing, she and Nick sat in silence. Miranda didn’t want to open her eyes. Roman soldiers, ghosts for almost two thousand years, had walked the road beneath her, and she’d heard them. This wasn’t frightening, like the ash ghosts in Clifford’s Tower. This was exhilarating. She’d been so silly, wondering if Nick was going to harm her or drag her into some criminal activity. She wished she could come here every night.

  “There might be something about them in here,” she said, fumbling for Tales of Old York in her coat pocket. “It has tons of stuff about ghosts.”

  “Where did you get —” Nick began. He frowned at her, stretching a pale hand toward the book.

  “This? Someone gave it to me. Have you read it?”

  “No.” He dropped his hand. “It’s just — my mother had a copy of it. I never read it, though. You don’t, when you grow up in a place. You find things out by seeing them for yourself. Especially when you can … see more than other people can. You know.”

  “I … I guess,” stammered Miranda. She had never realized that she could see more than other people could. She’d had no idea that she was some kind of ghost whisperer. But when Nick talked about it, he made it seem almost normal.

  “Just don’t believe everything you read or hear about ghosts.” He sounded stern. Miranda wanted to ask him about the ghosts she’d seen on the Shambles — Margaret Clitherow and the apprentice in the attic window — but there was something about Nick’s dismissive tone that made her keep quiet. Rain was falling now — cold rain, splotching onto her face.

  “Come on — we should go.” He pushed himself up off the ground.

  “How do we get out of here?” Miranda got up, stiff and unsteady, dusting off her jeans. The walls were closed by now, she knew. The gates in Bootham Bar were much bigger and sturdier than the ones they’d vaulted to jump down into the garden. She didn’t want to be stuck in this creepy courtyard all night.

  “Now that it’s dark, we can climb over the fence,” he said, gesturing to the spiked wrought-iron railings on the other side of the courtyard. They looked too high and too menacing to Miranda, but Nick showed her how to use the stone basin and a piece of brick jutting out of the adjoining wall to hoist herself up. She swung down onto the street on the other side, feeling pleased with herself, like an accomplished cat burglar. Nick came soaring down after her, a black-feathered bird of prey.

  “Well, thanks. Good-bye.” Miranda awkwardly held up a hand, more like swearing an oath than waving.

  “Tomorrow night at Monk Bar, okay?” Nick demanded rather than asked. “We can make it later — six o’clock. One of the Vikings’ victims. Nailed to a door, I should warn you.”

  “Oh,” said Miranda, startled. He’d seemed almost anxious to be rid of her, but now he wanted to meet up again. The thought of seeing him again made her nervous, but in a good way. At least, she thought it was in a good way. “Sure. Okay. Monk Bar at six. I’ll see you there.”

  Nick looked down at her. A half smile flitted across his face.

  “I’ll see you first,” he said, and headed off into the night.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Everyone seemed on edge at breakfast. Rob crunched his way through two bowls of cereal, staring glumly into space.

  “Thanks for leaving, like, a drop of milk for everyone else,” Miranda complained, sitting down next to him. He ignored her.

  “Rob, you look tired,” their mother said. She stood over the table, sorting through a sheaf of music, pursing her lips and frowning at the score. Today was the first rehearsal with the singers, Miranda knew, which was why her mother was so agitated. “I hope you’re not going to be working at the White Boar again tonight.”

  “It’s not working,” Rob spluttered. “I’m just helping Sally’s parents out. All their staff took off. They’re really shorthanded.”

  “Surely Sally’s father can find …” their father began, shaking the cereal box. “This is empty already?”

  “They can’t find anyone,” snapped Rob. “It’s a really busy time, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Peggy gave him a look. “Don’t speak to your father like that, please.”

  “Rob’s just, you know … carrying barrels for them and stuff,” Miranda said. “And clearing glasses and cups …”

  “Stay out of this,” said her father and Rob simultaneously. Miranda couldn’t believe it: She was actually trying to back Rob up, and he was turning on her. She banged her spoon in the bowl.

  “And there’s no need for that,” said her mother sharply.

  “Could everyone just CHILLAX!” Jeff brought the cereal box down onto the table, but it didn’t make much of a noise. He looked disappointed with the lack of dramatic effect.

  “Dad, nobody says ‘chillax’ anymore,” Miranda told him, picking up her spoon again.

  “Nobody ever said it,” added Rob.

  “Please, could you all stop talking.” Peggy shuffled all her pages together. “You two, if you’re going to drop in to the rehearsal today, come by around eleven and don’t make any noise. I’ll be home tonight by six at the latest. I thought we could have an early dinner at that Indian restaurant around the corner.”

  “I’ll still be out then,” their father said, folding the newspaper so only the crossword was visible. “Drinks thing with the R
ichard III Museum people, remember?”

  “I’ll be out then, too,” said Rob.

  “So will I,” said Miranda quickly.

  “Where are you going?” Rob muttered, pointing at her with his spoon. Milk dribbled from the side of his mouth. Miranda hoped he acted more civilized in front of Sally.

  “None of your business,” she whispered.

  “Could everyone please be home no later than six thirty,” said Peggy, sliding papers into her portfolio. It was a statement rather than a question.

  “Seven,” said Miranda. It meant she wouldn’t have much time with Nick, but anything was better than nothing. She wanted to see the Viking ghost. She wanted to see Nick.

  “Ten,” said Rob. He was pushing it, Miranda thought.

  “I could possibly make it.” Jeff sounded uncertain, but then he seemed to notice Peggy’s look of exasperation and disbelief. “Of course, darling — six thirty. No problem. You two! Home by six thirty. You can run wild other nights. Your mother and I have the medievalists’ banquet tomorrow night, which, by the way, you’re very welcome to attend.”

  “No, thanks,” said Miranda. She’d been tricked into one of these medievalist shindigs before, in some conference-center ballroom in Chicago. Dry chicken, boring conversation, old people dancing. It was hideous.

  “Count me out,” said Rob. “Not that it doesn’t sound, you know — fun.”

  He and Miranda started laughing, snickering into their cereal bowls.

  “You are horrible, horrible children,” their mother declared, swinging her bag onto her shoulder. “I’m going.”

  “See you at the rehearsal!” Miranda called as her mother pattered down the stairs.

  Luckily, her parents were so preoccupied with their own activities, they’d forgotten to grill Miranda about what she was planning to do tonight until six thirty. The less they knew, the better. How could she begin to explain Nick — who he was, how they met, what they were doing together?